Inside Politics

About-face

“Responsibility has a way of focusing the mind,” Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley A. Strassel writes.

“Take Mark Pryor, Democratic senator from Arkansas. In 2007, Mr. Pryor voted to move card check, Big Labor’s No. 1 priority. And why not? Mr. Pryor knew the GOP would block the bill, which gets rid of secret ballots in union elections. Besides, his support helped guarantee labor wouldn’t field a challenger to him in the primary,” the writer said.

“Post-election, Mr. Pryor isn’t so committed. He’s indicated he wouldn’t co-sponsor the legislation again. …

“It hasn’t been much noticed, but the political ground is already shifting under Big Labor’s card-check initiative. The unions poured unprecedented money and manpower into getting Democrats elected; their payoff was supposed to be a bill that would allow them to intimidate more workers into joining unions. The conventional wisdom was that Barack Obama and an unfettered Democratic majority would write that check, lickety-split.

“Instead, union leaders now say they are being told card check won’t happen soon. It seems the Obama team plans to devote its opening months to important issues, like the economy, and has no intention of jumping straight into the mother of all labor brawls. It also seems Majority Leader Harry Reid, even with his new numbers, might not have what it takes to overcome a filibuster. It’s a case study in how quickly a political landscape can change, and how frequently the conventional wisdom is wrong.

“Paradoxically, it’s Mr. Reid’s bigger majority that is now hurting him. In 2007, he got every Democrat (save South Dakota’s Tim Johnson, who was out sick) to vote for cloture. But it was an easy vote. Democrats like Mr. Pryor knew the GOP held the filibuster, and that Mr. Bush stood ready with a veto. Now that Mr. Reid has 58 seats, red-state Democrats in particular are worried they might actually have to pass this turkey, infuriating voters and businesses back home.”

Unrequited love

“It seems as if a lifetime has passed since the 2008 presidential election,” Jennifer Rubin writes at pajamasmedia.com.

“John McCain’s Keystone Cops campaign is a hazy memory. The daily media barrage aimed at Sarah Palin has vanished. And the notion that Republicans might retain the White House during the greatest financial meltdown in 70 years now seems like a distant pipe dream. Meanwhile, in the interim between the election and the start of the new year, the country has learned a bit more about its president-elect,” the writer said.

“He hasn’t downloaded voluminous policy plans or divulged his deepest thoughts, but his actions - and decisions not to act - during the transition period suggest that he may not be exactly what either his supporters hoped or his opponents feared. The contours of his agenda are still not crystal clear, but some of the blanks have been filled in over the last two months.

“For starters, the fear of some on the right - and the hope of those on the left - that President-elect Obama was an ultra-dove, a sort of Manchurian candidate, has been largely discredited. His choice of a national security team filled with center-right figures and even a Bush administration defense secretary has shaken the left. His plans for a gradual drawdown of U.S. troops in Iraq and a prompt buildup in Afghanistan are virtually indistinguishable from McCain’s. So long as terrorists are on the rampage in Mumbai, and Hamas incites a new round of Middle East violence, one suspects the dawning of a new age of world peace and togetherness will be a long time in coming. And it doesn’t appear that Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Cuba’s Raul Castro will be coming for tea at the White House anytime soon.

“We have also learned that the media’s love affair with the president-elect is largely unrequited. He dumped the transition team report regarding his staff’s contacts with Blago the afternoon before a holiday, gave pabulum or non-answers at press conferences, and ditched the press pool to take his kids to an amusement park. The imbalance in his press relationship - devotion on one side and evasion, verging on testiness, on the other - may suggest rockier times lay ahead.”

Rule of law

“One of the axioms of American democracy is that we are a government of laws, not of men,” Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman writes.

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